Toying with Our Feelings
The Smackdown. Something happened last night that I never thought could happen. I waited in line for a midnight showing of a G-rated movie. I stood in the lobby of the local AMC 20, next to a skinny, teenage kid dressed up as a boxy, yellowish robot with tank treads, and stared across the hall at a line of people waiting to see "Wanted," the brash, gun-toting, slap-your-mother ultra-violent Mark Millar-adaptation. And as I watched them, I thought to myself, "Heh, losers." Obviously they had chosen the wrong movie to see that night. How could they possibly want to see anything else other than Pixar's newest, possibly greatest masterpiece, a two-hour-long space-opera with barely any dialogue about robots who sift through garbage? It was "Wall-E." And it was on.
So, today, it's "Wall-E," Pixar's newest advancement in computer-animated awesomeness, against the grand-daddy of them all, the first authentic feature-length computer-animated film ever, "Toy Story." We all know the deal there -- toys come to life. Done. We're hooked. And ever since the film's first screening, we've been running out of our front doors shouting "To Infinity and Beyond!" as we left for work each morning (you haven't?). So let's pit one set of talking inanimate objects against another set of sort-of-talking inanimate objects. Let the best merchandise win!

The Challenger. Way, way back, back before "Toy Story" was produced and Pixar was the animated behemoth that it is today, Andrew Stanton created Wall-E. A small, "short-circuit"-styled robot (whose name is actually an acronym for the phrase "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class") Wall-E is the last of a line of robots left on Earth to clean up the mess we've made. Due to years of gorging consumerism, the planet has been left a giant trash-heap, too littered to possibly sustain life. In a grand gesture of social responsibility, the mega-conglomerate Buy 'N Large Corporation has encouraged humanity to take a 5 year "vacation" away from the planet, allowing their robots stay behind and restore Earth to a livable state while we all relax pool-side. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.
"Wall-E" opens approximately 700 years after humanity's vacation should have ended and Earth is still largely a junkyard. All of the Buy 'N Large robots have been deactivated save for our our protagonist, Wall-E, who spends his days compressing trash into neat, stackable blocks and sorting through garbage for interesting knick-knacks that he can bring home with him (Wall-E is a bit of a pack-rat.) Unfortunately for Wall-E, this job is a lonely one. Aside from his pet cockroach, he is the only real inhabitant of this forgotten world, whose experiences with love are limited to the live-action musicals he's found amid the trash-heaps.
However, this all changes when a large spaceship suddenly lands near Wall-E's home and deploys EVE, a sleek, flying, all-business, blaster-wielding probe, with whom Wall-E instantly falls in love. It is Wall-E's courtship of EVE that then pushes the narrative, sending the timid little robot on an adventure into outer space and back to the humanity that had long forgotten him. The film is fun, jaw-dropping-ly beautiful and packed with some high-concept ideas, but will all that be enough to knock off a defending champ that has been called one of the top ten animated films EVER? Read on to find out!
The Defending Champion. 1995 marked a new era of cinema. Computer animation had yet to prove itself with regard to feature film, having since acted primarily as a complementary special effects vehicle and rarely as a stand-alone medium over extended time periods. And then seemingly out of nowhere, "Toy Story" happened and told the story of an outdated, wooden cowboy doll Woody's rivalry with Buzz Lightyear, a flashy, brash space-hero action-figure over the attentions of their young owner. For the last thirteen years, this film's been a measuring stick for the animated genre. Named by the American Film Institute (during their evaluation of top genre films) as one of the top 10 greatest animated films in the history of cinema, "Toy Story" began what has become an continuous series of successes for the endlessly imaginative production company Pixar. The words "To Infinity and Beyond" are a staple of popular culture, referenced time and again in areas ranging from entertainment to mathematics (it's true, wikipedia it) and it is still a major favorite of children and adults today. With its breathtaking animation, smart comedy and warming-ly intimate story, it has been easily the fighter to fear when it comes to animated throw-downs.
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